Bollywood dancer Mink, center, performs during a New Year celebration party in Bhopal, India, on Dec. 31, 2008.二ＯＯ八年十二月三十一日，寶來塢舞者敏克（中）在印度波帕爾一場跨年派對上表演。照片：歐新社

PHOTO: EPA

A Dubai court has fined an Indian man who said he was rehearsing for a role in a Bollywood movie for cross-dressing after he was caught red-handed applying mascara at a shopping mall, a newspaper reported.

The court found the 45-year-old property development firm manager identified only as P.K. guilty of cross-dressing in public, the English-language Gulf News said.

“I’m not guilty. I was cross-dressed because I was training to perform a woman’s role in Indian cinema,” the newspaper reported the defendant as telling the public prosecutor.

The court fined him 10,000 dirhams (NT$91,800) and suspended an initial six-month sentence for three years during which the man must not repeat the act.

However, the prosecution has appealed to seek stiffer punishment, the paper said, adding that the appeal will be heard next month.

Police who apprehended the man said his outfit was glittering like “a woman’s clothes,” and that “he wore a bra, mascara, women’s perfume and a wig” at the Mall of the Emirates, the paper added.

Property and finance hub Dubai is part of the seven-member United Arab Emirates, but has a diverse culture as expatriates comprise an estimated 80 percent of the population.